An Agent’s Demise – Newly edited and updated on Kindle
Amazon.co.uk
Amazon.com
An Agent’s Demise – Newly edited and updated on Kindle
Amazon.co.uk
Amazon.com
A quick update on projects underway
Following Beta readers feedback making some amendments, then off to editing
The sequel to An Agent’s Demise – about 95% done, making sure there are no plot screw ups with the original.
A group of short stories – no progress
A story of revolution surprise surprise – No progress
Dodgy neighbours – just started
Story connected by paintings – just started
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I wrote back in September in a blog called Advertising for the Self-Published Author of my experiences in trying to sell my books; I thought it would be worthwhile to share my sales figures, not as a way of boasting (there is little to boast about and I don’t want to discuss A Persuasive Man) but as information to my fellow new authors, I have excluded all physical copy sales (nearly all directly to me) – they don’t change anything and SmashWords sales which total less than 10 – so here goes.
I have cut off the first couple of months of An Agent’s Demise as this distorts the charts due to the number of Free Downloads and my brief number one position, using KDP Select so here it is on its own.
The impact of various advertising campaigns I have run has been disappointing to say the least. I have not been able to attribute any increase in sale to promotions through:
These campaigns have cost hard earned money, which can only be recovered through higher sales. So far I would have to say they are a pointless waste of time and money. I cannot even be bothered to list the actual statistics, number of views (allegedly hundreds of thousands) the number of clicks (tens) then the number of attributable purchases (0)
I did save money initially, by not Professionally Editing (in progress as I write) nor did I pay for cover design, promo video (I only have one) web site design or formatting. I purchased Scrivener and Aeon Timeline software after trying others. Add in costs for ISBNs, review copies to approve physical output, then there are the library copies British library and the others. I may never publish a physical copy again simply because of the cost. In other words, I have to purchase 7 copies of each book version just to fulfil these requirements.
I have set up two blogs, this one and one for the forthcoming Sci-Fi series The Interplanetary Geographic Service, a Facebook page and tried Twitter as guided by my betters. For book two I created a YouTube video. I have attended one writer’s workshop but personal selling has been non-existent much like my paperback and hardback sales. I did not join GoodReads until March. I updated my LinkedIn profile to include my new status.
KDP Select worked (for the downloaders) for An Agent’s Demise but of course free means nothing for the author. I am not convinced free actually leads to any reviews or even readers. Amazon knows whether someone downloaded for free but do they know if they have read it? Does a free download lead to a greater likelihood of a review? I left KDP Select alone for To The Survivors it has never been free except for a couple of Review Copies but remains my best seller. For A Persuasive Man it has been very difficult. It has had more advertising then any of the others, and KDP Select Free promotions and recently a KDP Countdown. I recently received some personal feedback on the book, which may explain its lack of sales or at least partially explain the reason. I shall be addressing that over the next few months.
I have several new projects underway:
I promised to write a blog about my first year of writing and selling. I can’t do that, I realised, until I have the KDP statistics for January 2014 which are due in a week or so. I’ll post the blog then.